We believe the Bible to be the Word of God. Some think that we should have
this belief without question or reasoning. This kind of belief is called
dogmatic, authoritative, revealed, or faith-based belief. Those who promote
this kind of acceptance of the Bible do not rely on reason as a part of such
belief. Their beliefs are based upon traditional understanding said to be
beyond the power of reason to explain or understand. A conflict between
reason and dogmatic belief can arise when the two forms of knowledge appear
to disagree. Often we find this sort of conflict due to bad reasoning or
bad dogmatic assertions. This is not a disagreement between science and
religion. Instead, we have a disagreement between two people, one specializing
in maintaining a traditional understanding of a language translation and
the other specializing in observing and experimenting with nature. So the
question really is "which of these two people should we believe when they
disagree and how might God feel about such matters?"

To illustrate this concept, imagine that someone translates a verse in
the Bible that the moon was made of green cheese and shows from the Hebrew
that it literally says "the moon has green cheese." As long as there was
never any reason to challenge this belief, there would not have been any
conflicts on this issue between contemporary knowledge and the traditional
understanding of the Holy Book. This, however, would have changed when actual
moon rocks were returned to earth and examined. The examination revealed
that the moon was not green cheese after all, but consisted of two different
types of rock, one of which was a gray-green basalt also found on earth.
Now we have conflict. This new scientific evidence would challenge the
prevailing dogmatic belief regarding the moon's composition. What would
be an appropriate response for the religious community to make? Naturally,
the validity of such scientific claims should be honestly investigated by
qualified parties. If the claims are verified with reasonable certainty,
then an honest reexamination of the linguistic basis for believing the moon
is made of green cheese should be made. The words in question may have alternate
meanings because the original Holy Book was written with only 8,000 or so
different words. The following is a fictional account of this examination:

After careful scholastic consideration, it turns out that what had
been translated green had also been
rendered gray-green in other passages.
Also, the word that had been translated cheese did not always refer to a dairy
product directly. The word could also describe the surface texture associated
with congealed or curdled milk. Because of this reexamination, it was found
that the term green cheese could
also be translated gray-green rough surface.
This resolves the faith/science issue for those of us who believe that the
Bible and science are friends and cannot conflict. The traditionalist, however,
argued that everywhere else in the Holy Book, whenever the combined term
green cheese was used, it
always referred to a dairy product. This was countered with the argument
that this is the only incident in the Holy Book that the context was related
to a heavenly object and so there was no valid translational precedent in
the Holy writings. All other uses of the word combination green cheese were made within the context
of human activity. Both sides of the argument believe that they are taking
the Bible literally. How would the traditionalist justify his position?

One way would be to say that the rocks are not real. It is an evil
conspiracy by the Devil and by scientists just to confuse us and test our
faith in the Holy Writings. (Note: None of these issues would be a test
of our faith in the truth of the Holy Writings. Instead, the issues would
be a test of our faith in the traditionalists who translated and interpreted
the Holy Writings for us.) A second way would be to assert that the tests
on the rocks are wrong despite a growing mountain of evidence to the contrary.
We could say that the moon is still green
cheese, but the scientists do not want us to know or are mistaken
in their tests. They are either too stupid or too proud to admit their mistake.
A third way would be to dogmatically say that God made green cheese to look and feel just like
rocks as a means of testing our faith in the interpretation of His Word.
We might go so far as to turn this belief into a salvation issue because
some of the scientists may be of our own religious tradition. They would
claim that, if we reject the traditional interpretation and accept scientifically-proven
facts, God is going to severely punish us. Consequently, many would be afraid
to accept anything scientific that disagrees with the traditionalist interpretation
no matter how unreasonable it is. If it turns out that these so-called traditionalists
are wrong and that God has chosen to work within the laws of nature that
He established, what reaction might He have toward those who dogmatically
make Him look foolish by saying that He intentionally created green cheese
to look, feel, and test to be just like rock and then punishing those who
are confused by what He did. What do you think?

This analogy is exactly what is happening today as many denominational
traditionalists force their teachings on the Word of God. We know how we
feel when someone distorts something we have taught so that we look foolish.
We would not want to produce such feelings in God.